The Book of Friends
by Genesis Coffee
Summary: On his tenth birthday Harry wakes up to find a worn out book by his bedside…a book that tells of a ruined world where humanity has ceased and a large animal preserve intended to preserve endemic life is all that remains. Wizards…? What sort of animal are they? Strong!Smart! Harry/Harem


Saw some artwork of Serval from Kemono Friends curling up inside of an amazon jp box and thought to myself that it was pretty cute. It was then that I decided to write this based on a whim…obvious AU is obvious.

 **Warning:** _This chapter and subsequent story is to be rated accordingly for language, suggestive themes, violence, and/or potential gore. If at some point I do decide to incorporate lemons I will give fair warning to their inclusion in a chapter, the romance and subsequent relationships though will still remain in the story…_

 **Official Disclaimer:** _I do not own Harry Potter, Kemono Friends or any referenced or related works in that may appear in this story. If there ever is an OC inclusion in this or any of my stories, the resemblance of a name and/or physical appearance to anyone living or deceased is completely coincidental._ _ _All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the sole property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author._ The right of any pictures or art I will ever use go to their respective owners, if said artist would like the picture removed from my profile or story, for that is where it would most likely be, please say so instead of jumping to conclusions of infringement. __No copyright infringement is intended._

 _The cover image used for this story is an edited version of an image that I believe belongs to the pixiv artist_ **W18** depicting Northern White-Faced Owl and Eurasian Eagle-Owl _. I don't intend to take credit for said artist's artwork and the rights to it belong solely to said artist. I make no profit from this story._

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Chapter I

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 **Records of a Ruined World**

-x-

A young boy with messy black hair and bright green eyes stared fixedly at a row of three red clothed toy soldiers facing against a much smaller green army man. The toys themselves, like most of his other belongings, looked old and worn with one of the red clothed soldiers even missing his musket, but they were more than enough to help him set the scene. He had found them all abandoned at parks or at school, this being how he got most of his childlike belongings.

Of course his relatives swore up and down that he stole them and punished him for it, but since the damage was already done and he wouldn't tell them where he _really_ got them from they eventually let the matter drop. He was afraid that they would throw them away at the time, but they didn't…maybe even they silently acknowledged how a child his age not having any toys at all would not exactly be _normal_.

Not that they would go out of their way to buy him any of course.

Currently Harry was trying to figure out how the smaller green army man could potentially triumph over the bigger red soldiers. Recently his older cousin had taken to bullying him at school with the help of two equally large friends of his and he often got trampled underfoot as a result. Even now he could barely go out of the house for fear of them ganging up on him. As it was he still had nightmares about his cousin shouting out "Dogpile!" at the top of his lungs before he felt over three hundred pounds of collective bully land on him. Harry shivered at the memory.

Focusing back on the matter at hand Harry tried to set up the scene in his mind as he put himself in the green army man's place. No weapons in hand, outnumbered three to one, and all enemies are over twice his size…

Harry's eyes shone with determination as he firmly grabbed the green army man and…ran away. He didn't want to get hurt! He had no allies and the enemy was armed! Those muskets were big enough that they could blow off one of his limbs with a single shot! Run, for queen and country he must survive!

Harry moved his hand quickly and repositioned the three red clothed soldiers, a silly smile on his face as he started enjoying himself.

Escape! He had to escape! His only option was to outmaneuver the enemy and wait for reinf…no! Radio comms are down! The commander fell to the first line of fire! Wait no, there was never a commander in the first place! This was a suicide mission!

Before he even realized it he had been surrounded, the enemy used their numbers advantage to cut off his escape route as they eyed him like prey. Despite his fast speed and small stature initially preventing them from getting a bead on him he quickly found himself cornered! Desperation quickly set in.

"No wait please, can't we talk about this!?"

Both of the musket wielding soldiers glanced at each other at the outburst from the smaller green army man. The unarmed red clothed soldier pushing them both aside as he walked (wobbled) confidently towards the smaller green army man. The two musket soldiers stumbled for a bit before they collected themselves and both sneered at the green army man.

"I don't have anything to say to you except…dogpile!" The unarmed soldier shouted as his compatriots roared in approval.

"Nooooo!" The green army man shouted in desperation as the large figures of the three red clothed soldiers rushed towards him…and everything stopped.

Harry could be seen hanging his head over the small nightstand, his hair shadowing his eyes as his shoulders shook against his will. A teardrop fell, followed quickly by another, before he could stop himself loud heart wrenching sobs filled the room as he tilted his head back and cried. Tasting the bitter tears as they fell upon his lips an empty feeling further hollowed out his chest as his cries grew ever more piercing. Aggrieved, wronged, scared, lost…all these while accurate ultimately failed to capture what he truly felt at the moment.

The suffocating feeling of being trapped in a closet, the pressure of having to do a household's worth of chores, the fear towards his aunt and uncle, and finally the bullying and hazing at school. Helplessness…he slowly realized, helplessness accompanied by near crippling self-doubt was what he felt. With this realization a question surfaced in his thoughts, one so powerful that it almost caused his mind to nearly collapse in on itself as his cries abruptly ceased.

 ** _"Why?"_**

Staring blankly at the wall with his tear-streaked face Harry saw another little boy just like him, with a similar appearance to his own the boy stood in a room with broken toys scattered all around him. That boy too cried as he angrily threw around his belongings in a fit of anger. Was that the next emotion he should feel – anger? If so what exactly should he be angry at? Should he be angry towards his parents for dying in a car crash? At his relatives for treating him so poorly? At his cousin for bullying him? At his teachers for not doing anything to stop it? At his school for not hiring better teachers?

One could be angry at so many things…however one needed a direction for such a destructive emotion as it wasn't good to simply bottle it up. If not he would be like that boy, simply breaking the things around him just to vent his emotions. A tantrum…that was what his teacher had called it, an emotional outburst due to a sudden fit of anger or frustration. The teacher had gone on to say that only babies threw tantrums – he was not a baby. He was turning ten tomorrow and he would act like it!

Wiping away his tears the image of the boy throwing his tantrum vanished just as he felt a sharp pain coming from the scar on his forehead. His consciousness slipping away he barely managed make out the final words the boy said before he collapsed.

 _" **Why doesn't anyone want to play with me!? I did everything right! I followed** **all** **the rules! If only I could make a single friend then I…!"**_ The furious voice of the youth finally faded away as his mind spiraled into darkness, those last few words echoing across his subconscious.

'…If only I could make a single friend…'

'…a single friend…'

 **'Friend'**

The world's magic screamed…

-x-

Harry once read in a book "That if you want to change tomorrow you have to change today" yet even so when you have lived a thousand yesterdays that look the same then changing tomorrow seems harder than holding the entirety of the sky in your hands. It teases your thoughts with how simple it could be to act differently yet your feet remain firmly grounded…reality denying flights of fancy by clipping your wings and keeping you caged.

How often does one fantasize? Confessing your love to your crush, talking back to your boss, building the nerve to answer all those missed calls, standing up to those putting you down…as humans we laugh and cry…we live and die, yet most of all…we dream. Hoping against all odds that what we want to happen, one day _will_ happen.

Harry's dreams however were short-sighted, unable to see beyond yesterday while looking at tomorrow all measure of control is lost as everything that happens seems to already be set in stone – inevitable. Only in control of his own little life his dreams were limited to two. The first was a life without his relatives and the second, as morbid as it may seem, was the instance of his death.

The first fell under the spectrum of his ideal fantasy and the second fell under the aspect of what he felt he could control. Often he caught himself staring at an open stretch of road thinking that if he were to get hit by a car if the Dursley's would feel any sense of loss over his death?

Would they look upon the empty closet under the stairs and feel their hearts clench as an empty feeling assaulted them? Would they feel something, anything at all, when they called out to him in the morning only to be met with silence? These thoughts grew and grew, until one day he looked at his untied shoelaces and thought of how he was never good at tying them. How no matter how many knots he made it always came undone. Briefly he thought of how much better it would be if there wasn't a shoelace in the first place and that was when he realized…

He…was a coward.

Rather than facing life he thought of death and the pain it could inflict upon others. Yet at the same time he was scared that once he died there would be no one around to mourn him. Afraid to live…afraid to die…if this wasn't a coward then what was? That day he relinquished such laughable control over his life, since if he were to die he wanted his death to be meaningful rather than for the purpose of spiting those that tormented him.

No, he wanted to live a long and happy life. In fact if he could he'd rather live forever and do all the things he hadn't done in his admittedly short life. Go to all the places he had never seen, eat all the things he hadn't eaten, and at end of his journey he wanted to look back at his life and smile…

Just the day before he had acquired another dream not at all inferior to his previous one. Having seen the image of that lonely boy losing himself to his hatred he had decided that he wanted the same thing that boy had craved for – friends. Unable to grasp his reason for living in the first place, he hoped that maybe others could add some sort of meaning to his life. Such was the selfishness of a coward…in the end knowing that he could not live for himself he pushed the burden onto others.

Ignorant of the contradictions brought forth by his own ego he took such selfishness for granted, thoughtlessly looking at life…he pressed forward.

-x-

Blearily opening his eyes to a new day Harry quickly found that he had slept in. Something that he was unused to as his relatives would usually wake him at the crack of dawn to carry out his early morning chores. It wasn't until moments later that he recalled that they left the evening prior for their flight to France, something about a family vacation. One that of course excluded him.

Three days without any Dursley's…Harry could hardly keep the smile off his face.

However his eyes suddenly widened as his sight fell upon a book quietly resting by his side, one that he was certain hadn't been there the night prior. Looking as if it were made of bronze, it lay there innocently…its colour faded and worn as if it had weathered countless storms to reach his side. Being three times thicker than a normal book it was unlike any book he had ever seen. Yet there were two things that stood out to Harry the most…

First was the feeling of longing that he felt towards the strange book, an inexplicable attraction that seemed to call out to him from the depths of his soul to reach out and never let go. An eager anticipation also accompanied it, as if his life would only truly begin the moment he opened the book…as if everything was leading up to this moment.

The other thing was seemingly less extraordinary than the first, but to Harry it was infinitely more significant. For on the cover of the book, in faded bronze lettering, was a title that shook him to his very core.

 _ **The Book of Friends**_

Unbidden tears came to his eyes as he suddenly felt that tomorrow had finally come, subconsciously reaching his hand towards the book he felt something change in him the moment his fingers brushed against the cover. Closing his eyes he basked in the sensation, clearly feeling as a bond settled between the two of them. The feeling was as if a prior emptiness inside him had been filled. His entire body trembled as the feeling intensified, the book itself shimmering in response as it broke into a golden light that filled the small closet to the brim.

Under such a bright light Harry couldn't open his eyes even if he wanted to, yet all the worries he might have had about this development were dispersed like smoke before the light. Slowly, ever so slowly…he could feel a mysterious strength be born from within him. It simultaneously awakening an equally mysterious power that had long slept inside of him before intermingling together to create something that was far grander than the sum of its parts. One power was birthed and another awakened, yet both were but two parts of the same whole. Neither separate from the other…

Unbeknownst to him a beam of light shot itself from the book heading straight towards the space between his brows. In an instant his mind went blank as he felt as if countless storm clouds raging in his mind were instantly dispersed, his thoughts flowing clearly for seemingly the first time as his memories became crystal clear. Suddenly he seemed to understand countless things, yet unable to comprehend such foreign knowledge the core concepts behind them eluded him. Quietly settling into his subconscious they patiently waited for the day when his understanding and wisdom were sufficient to wield the knowledge that he had been gifted.

With the parting of the clouds a brief pain could be felt from his head that he dismissed as nothing more than his mind struggling to accommodate the vast knowledge that had been forced upon him. He dismissing a pained cry as his scar burned in pain as nothing more than a figment of his imagination. Quietly without even its host being aware of it, the soul anchor that had resided within Harry's scar was swiftly destroyed. Never to play a part in future events…

Over the soul cavity left following the incident, a strange rune slowly took shape before quickly filling the void left in the soul anchor's wake.

Slowly the light receded until only the place where his hand came into contact with the book retained any trace of it. Coming back to his senses he almost yanked his hand away as his previous euphoric state of mind was replaced by fear and suspicion. However just as quickly as the intention to pull away his hand surfaced it quickly vanished, he observing as the light danced joyfully around his fingertips. Feeling the connection that he shared with the book he found that it felt like an extension of himself, no different than an arm or a leg.

The light clinging obstinately to his fingers as it playfully nipped at him, Harry couldn't help amusing himself with it for a bit before shaking his fingers causing it to disperse. Inwardly he was surprised at his own reaction as beyond some vague wariness and suspicion any powerful bursts of negative emotion quickly found itself soothed under the gentle golden light the book had previously emitted. The book while strange and mysterious didn't seem like a bad thing, even the magical display from just now had left him feeling more excited than afraid. Not giving him time to continue his musings the book flipped open as it quickly settled on a page…

-x-

 _A long time ago there existed a world filled to the brim with life. Humans lived their lives happily and carefree, for having learned from the mistakes of their forefathers they had achieved peace, prosperity, and everlasting happiness. A world of contentment, one filled with all the luxuries and fulfillment that humanity could ever wish for. This infant humanity had remade Earth into the ultimate Eden, where it wanted for nothing and had everything._

 _Yet human greed is insatiable, stagnation impossible after having progressed so far man cast their eyes onto the heavens…their gaze filled with wonder._

" _How far is it to heaven?" asked the common man_

" _How far is the most distant star?" questioned the astronomer_

" _How far are we from attaining panacea?" wondered the doctor_

" _How far are we from god?" contemplated the philosopher_

" _How far…is god?" echoed the people_

 _Idle hands finding a calling, humanity set forth to answer such questions. How far was humanity willing to go to know the answers to such things? To reach…god?_

 _Too far._

 _Unable to control their own ambition humanity invited disaster upon itself as they, unsatisfied with the paradise they had created, lusted for the throne of god. Distorting the world through their blasphemous science they cracked the fabric of reality and allowed something to slip through…_

 _A higher dimensional substance by the name of Sandstar flooded into their world, distorting all it touched. Capable of simultaneously existing across multiple planes of reality it was something that humans with their limited faculties could barely begin to comprehend. Forcibly evolving the planet, the paradise that humanity had long called home swiftly started to turn inhospitable. Animals evolved into higher functioning species, landscapes were altered beyond recognition, and with this evolution those same animals, now able to sustain themselves through the existence of Sandstar, removed themselves from the food chain._

 _Only humanity was left behind in the process of 'upgrading' their world._

 _With both the flora and fauna having assimilated Sandstar into themselves and humans being unable to produce new sources of food, humanity started the slow and torturous process of starving itself into extinction. With numerous 'eruptions' of Sandstar occurring across the globe it gave birth to a new organism that spelled the end for mankind – Cerulians. Intent on devouring all that stood in their way of consuming ever more Sandstar these non-sentient creatures finally made the planet incapable of sustaining life. The fact that Sandstar was not solely isolated to their world and spanned the entirety of their universe meant that humanity, unable to survive ingesting Sandstar, were destined to die out._

 _That was when humanity discovered that those animals that had evolved into higher functioning versions of their previous species had attained sentience, and even looked up to humanity as its parent race. Bearing humanoid appearances humans felt hope light in their hearts once more as they gazed upon these gentle creatures born from their own folly, like a candle about to burn out humanity shone ever so brightly as it once more dared to dream…_

" _Look how friendly they are! Even though they hold every advantage they still look up to us! I guess there is a silver lining to every cloud isn't there?"_

" _Hey stop playing around, we made them so it's up to us to be responsible for them. It's the least we can do…"_

" _Its fine…as long as they're happy is there a need to worry? Isn't it a bit comforting to have someone to remember us when we're gone?"_

 _They were named 'friends' by the people, they looking upon them with the fondness a parent could only have towards their child. Inadvertently in their quest for godhood humanity had created sentient lifeforms that were devoid of the ego necessary of inflicting harm upon others. Innocent and pure, humanity felt a sense of pride and responsibility towards their creations. Was this what it felt like to be god?_

 _Humanity on the cusp of ruin set forth on a last grand undertaking. With millions dying by the day they set forth to construct a refuge from the horrors of the outside world, the final haven in an otherwise ruined world. Three generations later…facing the metropolis as it fades away, it was finally completed. Built upon a hundred million corpses the last park in the world opened._

" _How big is it?" asked the child_

" _Big enough" answered the mother_

" _How many friends are there?" asked the child_

" _One of every kind" replied the father_

" _What will we call it?" asked the child_

" _Japari Park" both parents answered with light smiles_

 _With time they too went quiet…with no one around and the world withered, humanity had managed to immortalize itself though its actions. Safe from the threat of Cerulians the 'friends' inherited the Earth and forever fondly remembered their creators and the love they had for them. Having left a legacy humanity was able to move on…the inhabitants of Japari Park having fulfilled countless dreams with their mere existence._

 _The dreams of humanity unified and resolute as they were, came together to create Japari Park and such a grand selfless act moved the heavens. The dreams of an entire world taking shape and becoming a book…The Book of Friends._

 _-x-_

Unable to stop his tears Harry tightly held the book to his chest as he cried. Having craved for even a little bit of love throughout his short life, he suddenly found himself holding the love of an entire world. Let alone him who had nothing, even a person that had everything would still be moved by such a tale. Holding the dreams of an entire world, the book in his arms suddenly felt that much heavier.

A faint imprint of a humanoid figure appearing in his mind he knew that it was finally time…pressing his hand onto the book as light streamed from between his fingers, there was no more hesitation in his actions. A blight light filling the room Harry smiled.

It was time for him to meet his first _friend_...


End file.
